Day: February 1, 2017

PALO ALTO, Calif.—After what has felt like an interminable wait since our brief taster at CES last year, we finally landed some proper seat time with the new Chevrolet Bolt. It’s the most convincing battery electric vehicle (BEV) to emerge thus far from one of the traditional automakers, a ground-up design with clever packaging and a 60kWh battery that gives it a range of 238 miles (383km). And until Tesla’s Model 3 goes into production later this year, it’s the only reasonably affordable long-range BEV on the market.

It’s not entirely surprising that Chevrolet was the first of the traditional OEMs to respond to Tesla. Parent General Motors tried to make EVs viable in the early 1990s with the EV1, perhaps a little too soon before battery technology made the leaps it has. More recently, it has sold more than 110,000 plug-in hybrid EVs in the form of the first– and second-generation Volt. While the Bolt obviously benefits from this institutional know-how, the new car is a ground-up design, not an evolution of its PHEV platform.

Most people are not aware that if one is covered at work by an employer retirement plan, such as a 401k plan, their ability to deduct their IRA contributions for that year could be limited by the amount of their adjusted gross income.

If you’ve ever seen a bat in flight, you know how impressive their aerial acrobatics can be — so impressive that we have yet to successfully imitate it the way we have with locomotion or even bird flight. This impressive new flying robot is the best attempt yet, though it’s still a long way from the “unrivaled agility” of the real thing. Read More

In threatening Mexico, China, Japan and the Eurozone with trade wars, Trump and Navarro are manipulating our currency big time. I predict a major drop in the dollar if Congress doesn’t intervene and keep our country from heading down its “elected” path to economic isolation and decline.

“We’re focusing more on shorter form content to start” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on today’s Q4 earnings call, where he was repeatedly questioned about Facebook’s video strategy. One thing’s clear, Facebook will invest heavily. “I see video as a mega trend,” said Zuckerberg. Facebook will both pay video makers up front and through ad… Read More

The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday killed two Obama-era rules, one intended to root out corruption in the extraction sector and one aimed at reducing stream pollution.

Required by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s “extraction rule” was approved this summer to require oil, gas, mining and other companies to publicly state the taxes and other fees they pay to governments. Republicans say the requirement is burdensome and costly for energy companies, and also that it duplicates other long-standing regulations.

The stream buffer rule is intended to lessen the amount of waste from mountain-top removal coal mining deposited in local waterways. Republican lawmakers, though, say it is hurting coal jobs by placing unworkable limits on the industry.

The Republican-dominated Senate is expected to quickly take up killing both regulations and then send the resolutions to President Donald Trump to sign.